To War Against Felenga (FINAL UPDATE POSTED!)

[the Jester]

The Chapel of Evil; plus, a footnote on electrum drelvins

The altar is made of a weird, opalescent blue material. It glows from within with a pale blue light. As Rex touches it, the altar fires a sudden intense blast of lightning through him, catching Angelfire and Thrush as well. The smell of ozone fills the air and the altar starts glowing an angry bluish-red, with a growing, scintillating aura. Our heroes, staggered by the lightning bolt, hesitate- and the altar blows itself apart, sending chunks of the weird opalescent material flying at them with explosive force! When it’s over almost everyone is smarting from their wounds, but being heroic* our heroes just continue their search. There’s not much left of the altar; the dais is now scarred and, in some places, embedded with smoking pieces of the altar.

The pews, Drelvin and Rex discover, have hinged seats. The rearmost pair of pews- the first ones they check- contain about 8000 sp between them.

“A lot of change,” Drelvin says ironically. Nobody takes any of it.

“Let’s check the rest of the pews!” Rex looks greedily at the other three pairs of benches. “Maybe there’s some gold or platinum!” He opens up the next pew and finds electrum.

“That’s unconventional,” comments Patyn.

“Hey, are there any drelvins in there?”** The archer starts digging through the coins excitedly. Several other party members join in on the fun, but nobody finds a drelvin. They do, however, find some odd electrum coins with an undead ram’s head on it.

“Orcus,” Patyn states.

“Orcus?” Thrush asks. “Who’s that?”

“Demon prince of undead,” Patyn snarls. “But he’s dead.”

“What?” exclaims Drelvin. “I’ve heard of Orcus, but not that he was dead! How’d he die?”

“It was quite some time ago, actually. He was slain by the Drow goddess Kirianselee.”

“Well, who would put Orcus on their currency?”

“Maybe,” suggests Angelfire, “the academy back there.” She gestures vaguely, since she doesn’t know which direction the Black Academy lies in.

Patyn shakes his head. “No, they don’t mint coins.” He fingers the electrum with Orcus’ face upon it thoughtfully. “I don’t know where they’d put his visage on their coins. Somewhere where they worship him...”

The party examines the silver coins but finds none with Orcus’ face upon them. With a shrug, Rex opens the next hinged seat. “Gold!” he cries gleefully. The party scoops it up. “I’m guessing that means there’s platinum in the next one!” Rex says, hurrying over. He throws open the seat-

There’s a hissing sound as olive-colored gas sprays out at a prodigious rate. “Aargh!” Rex cries, and the party feels a weakness start to steal over their limbs. Rex throws the seat shut and the group retreats to the room’s far corner for a few moments while the gas dissipates.

“Maybe the other one,” Rex mutters, approaching the other pew of the foremost pair.

“Wait, it’s bound to be another trap!” Thrush calls, but too late: Rex opens the pew up and more gas sprays out. With another strangled cry, the dragon disciple heaves the pew shut then hurries to the far corner with the others.

Someone mutters something about “worse than Lester,” but Rex ignores it. He’s wondering if that platinum is underneath the gas...? Is it worth it?

“How about the arch?” Ulla asks.

“I don’t know about that,” Drelvin puts in quickly. “Let’s check out some more mundane places first.” The group nods in agreement and they search for secret doors. Drelvin finds something interesting: a circle scribed in the stone. “I’m an elf,” he comments with a wry smile, “we’re good at finding things.”

The party pokes and prods the circle to no effect. Reasoning that it must do something, they try to put something over it. First the press a coin to it (it’s about the right size) but to no effect. They try one of the Orcus coins (many of the party took some in case they prove necessary for something or other), but this doesn’t do the trick either. Gems don’t cause any reaction.

“How about a ring?” suggests Sybele.

It seems as though a ring would fit just right. “Why don’t we put that sucky ring of protection we found in?” suggests Drelvin.

They do. The ring slides neatly into the circle in the stone and, with a great grinding sound, the massive block of stone begins to sink into the floor, revealing a passage behind it! The block only descends a few inches, however; before grinding to a halt and closing again. The ring is crushed to powder.

“Crap,” says Thrush helpfully.

“Perhaps a different ring?” suggests Ulla.

“I bet we have to use that ring of wizardry we found in the box,” Drelvin remarks. The party digests this for a moment.

“It seems logical,” groans Angelfire. “Whatever we need to get through is basically a key, right? And they key should be in this place somewhere, right?”

“We should get Sybele and Azekia first,” Ulla says, and turns into a bat to fly back and tell them to join the rest of the party. Azekia and Sybele have been having a nice time chatting. While they waited Azekia performed an augury and determined that moving through the arch in the hall of spheres would be a very baneful sort of thing to do. Both the angel and Sybele are glad to move on. Azekia polymorphs into a smaller form for the trip and Sybele manages to get through as well.***

Then the group proceeds to insert the ring into the circle; and the stone block slowly, slowly, grinds downward, revealing a dark passage beyond it. There’s a faint stink in the air, barely noticeable and impossible to identify. Behind the block the passage runs out onto a landing, which then descends in a broad stairway to the right. Cautiously our heroes head downwards...

*The smallest number of total hp in the party is 104. The highest is 314. (That’s Lester.)

**Of course, electrum has fallen out of favor as a medium of exchange, but there are still old coins found here and there. Their value tends to fluctuate more widely than conventional coins, however, since electrum is not a natural metal and the coins are not generally minted any longer.

Different realms put different coins out, of course. About a decade ago, the electrum pieces of Malford’s new Dorhausian nation were called “drelvins” and had Drelvin’s form holding his bow on one face of the coin. When Drelvin lost a powerful bow devoted to the Queen he fell out of favor and they stopped minting drelvins.

***Now how she got through I honestly don’t remember and don’t have in my notes. I want to say that someone reduced her, but I don’t know who that would’ve been... Maybe Drelvin’s sword? I dunno.


Next Time: Have I mentioned the trap that did 30d6 points of damage in one round?

 

[the Jester]

The Trap That Did 30d6 Damage!

The stairs our heroes descend lead down about 20’ before ending in a hallway that leads away to their right. Cautiously, our heroes advance to a doorway. Weapons are loosened in their sheaths and Sybele throws the door open.

A 20’ long hallway, ending in another door.

Annoyed, Sybele moves forward to walk to the next door and almost falls into a pit that opens up beneath her feet! She jerks back, barely in time. “Heh,” Drelvin smirks. “Pit trap. Oldest trick in the book.”

Rex spreads his draconic wings and takes to the air, flying over to the other door and landing gingerly before it. The rest of the group starts making their way over while Rex opens the door- and frowns as he sees another 20’ hallway ending in a door. “Careful,” he warns, “there’s probably another pit trap here. Man, I hope there aren’t too many doors in a row.” He launches himself into the air again, and again he lands before the far door.

“No kidding,” remarks Drelvin. Shastruth is in his hand.

“This one’s different,” Rex calls. “The passage keeps going and turns. But I bet there’s a pit trap somewhere.” Sybele prods about and soon triggers one.

It takes a few moments for the group to pass the pits but it’s not really very hard. Thrush grumbles to himself about needing a way to fly or something, but for now he can simply be carried. Then our heroes cautiously advance to the bend in the passage and peer around the corner. The hall seems to go on past the limits of their vision. Nervously, our heroes begin advancing. Then-

“What’s that?” cries Drelvin.

Something moves in the darkness. A tremendous chill falls over the group as a whole; whatever it is, it is wrong. The party begins moving forward, Azekia issuing a prayer on their behalf as they move; and then a cone of freezing vapor issues from the dark shadow before them. Almost everyone is caught in the blast, and though the damage is not enough to fell any of our heroes, they all feel the chill settle in their bones.

Shastruth casts true strike on Drelvin while Angelfire, Azekia, Patyn, Rex and Ulla move forward to attack the dark shadow. Whatever it is, it’s clearly hostile and looks very dangerous. I mean, hey- isn’t everything in here very dangerous? Anyhow, this one looks nasty. Rex, Ulla and Azekia reach it quickly enough to attack before things go awry, and the solar is the only one of them to land a blow in their first exchange. “Incorporeal!” Rex yells a warning.

Then things go awry.

“Beware!” cries Verzavi, springing backwards from the tunnel. The gith has clearly seen something and is crying out, “Trap, trap!”

“The hall’s tilting!” screams Sybele, even as she fires from the edge of the part- there’s some sort of hinge, and-

Patyn grimly activates his necklace of levitation, knowing he’s probably too slow to avoid whatever happens next. He winces sympathetically as the solar is struck by the dark shadow’s finger of death, but fortunately Azekia shrugs it off. Her sword flashes with holy power as she continues to hack at the thing, whatever it is, that lured them into this passage. Angelfire keeps advancing while Thrush, realizing that the lack of flying he was just bemoaning might shortly prove lethal, rushes back to the area that seems stable. Just in time, he leaps out as the hinged passage swings down.

Let’s describe how this works in detail. As the pcs walk down a hall, they pass a certain point with a hidden hinge in the floor. From there, once enough weight is far enough out past the hinge to trigger the trap, the hinged section of hallway tilts from a horizontal position to a vertical position. The ‘tilting hall trap’ also includes the ceiling and walls; the effect being, when it swings downward, all creatures in it are smacked around pretty hard, potentially stunned, and probably falling down the 100’ of hinged hallway and landing in the red glow below.

As it is incorporeal, the dark shadow, of course, merely passes through the wall as it swings downward.

Patyn, Azekia, Rex and Ulla are battered badly as the hall swings down, crashing into them and bouncing them off the walls for a moment. Thanks to his necklace, Patyn dangles in midair; Azekia and Rex both manage to get their wings moving in time to catch themselves before falling.

Angelfire, unfortunately, has no flight capability at the moment, and with a startled cry, she lands in the red glow below, which turns out to be a tremendous pool of molten rock. An incredibly loud, high-pitched scream echoes up into the passage.

“Uh-oh,” says Rex, and dives to aid her.

Sybele and Drelvin, meanwhile, fire into the darkness. The hall’s swung down but the thing’s bound to be there somewhere! Two of Drelvin’s arrows manage to hit, but they still can’t even see it. Then Azekia ascends from the passage and glares in the direction of the dark shadow.

The two creatures, a powerful force of light and a terrible force of darkness, fly together in a titanic clash. The shadow attempts to disarm the angel but fails, and she hacks at it but misses! They continue to struggle in the air, Azekia’s sword slashing and jabbing and the creature seeming to strike with darkness itself. Drelvin and Sybele keep up a barrage of arrows at it, trying desperately to destroy the terrible thing, and Thrush joins them.

Rex, meanwhile, swoops down and grabs Angelfire, who is screaming in terrible agony. She can’t help but think of the irony- not so long ago, she’d have loved swimming in hot lava. But it’s all a red haze of pain now! As Rex grabs on to her, the molten rock splashes him, and as he lifts her free he feels more hiss and sizzle and stick to his flesh. “Rrraggh!” he cries as the hot rock sears his body. But if he doesn’t help her, Angelfire will die! Rex perseveres, carrying her up to the top and dropping her before Verzavi, who starts trying to pull the molten rock off of Angelfire with her bare hands.

Then Rex springs forward towards the dark shadow. Ulla, too, moves forward, turning into a medium air elemental. Angelfire’s screams echo behind them as she desperately clears the magma clinging to her.

So far it seems to have the advantage. This impression is magnified when it finally manages to pluck the solar’s sword from her grasp and contemptuously crushes it between its black hands.

Next Time: Will our heroes turn the tables on the dark shadow? Stay tuned and find out!

 

[the Jester]

The Dark Shadow

Azekia the Solar gives out a shocked cry of rage as the twisted remains of her heavenly blade clang to the ground. The Dark Shadow chuckles as it sees the look on her face. Angelfire’s screams echo in the background.

“Dexter’s nadlies!” swears Drelvin, whipping Shastruth from his sheath and pointing him forward. The sorcerer sword unleashes a burst of magic missiles at the darkness, but the missiles fail to harm the monstrous thing before him.*

Then Patyn unleashes a positive energy burst. Brilliant white energy swells from within the hunter of the dead, flashing out to sear the dark shadow badly. The thing seems to momentarily cringe back from the blast, and the hunter of the dead uses his cloak to dimension door to behind the monster, into a flanking position with Azekia. Arrows and flaming missiles are flying at the party’s adversary, but it’s still holding its own.

“Watch out, the hallway’s swinging back up!” cries Ulla. Suddenly Patyn is in a position to be crushed.

Azekia grimaces. “I wish we have time to finish this fight before the hall squishes any of us!” she cries. Then she grunts as the dark shadow touches her, sending a shock through her celestial body- pure negative energy boiled in hate smashes at her essence! Patyn, just on the other side of it, aims a few blows at the shadow, but his blade slices through it ineffectively, as if it were air.

Then Verzavi and Angelfire are lunging in, the lava on the Coilite finally pulled free or cooled enough to be bearable, and then Rex springs in, slashing, darting, retreating; and Ulla, now in stone golem form, stomps forward, slapping at it with her powerful arms. The whole group is piling on it. Suddenly the situation has changed badly. The shadow fights terrifically, but another positive energy burst blasts it into oblivion.

Quickly, the group retreats into the part of the hall that didn’t swing down. After a moment’s discussion, the group decides to attack the hinge. It’s hidden out of sight below the hall itself, so our heroes are forced to dig (Ulla turns into an umber hulk). It takes only a few moments to reach it, and then a few more moments to destroy it. As they break apart one side of the hinge, the strain on the other slowly bends the stone, and breaking it apart at that point becomes an easy matter. The trapped section of hallway falls into the immense pool of lava below, landing with a tremendous splash of glowing molten rock and quickly sinking below the surface. Warmth wafts up to the party from the great lava pool.

“We should search around in here,” Rex says.

“You’ve got the wings,” Thrush replies wryly.

Indeed he does. Rex takes a flight around the chamber. Giving it as thorough of a go-over as he can, he doesn’t find anything of note- no obvious exits or features, except for the pool of lava. He returns to the group and informs them of his lack of finding.

“Too bad I don’t have the wings,” Drelvin comments. “We elves are good at finding secret stuff.” Rex rolls his eyes.

The group stops for a moment to discuss their next move.

“Where haven’t we been?” Drelvin starts.

“There are those other two arches,” Ulla suggests.

“But going through them would be baneful,” Azekia says sternly. “I performed an augury on each one. I do not think there is a benefit to be had from them, only sorrow.”

“Where else?” persists Drelvin.

“There’s the crawlway into the side of that pit that Lester found,” says Sybele. “And there might be more hidden exits from the room with the circles.”

“Why are we here again?” Thrush asks.

“Felenga’s phylactery,” three people tell him together.

“Is it here?”

“No,” Orbius explains. “We have to figure out how to go through the mouth safely. I think it’s there.”

The fighter laughs for a long moment before subsiding. “It just never ends, does it?” he chuckles.

“Where else can we go?” Drelvin asks again. “Have we searched everywhere else? What about all the pits? We already found one secret door in a pit.”

“And we haven’t yet searched the pits before the lava trap,” Angelfire points out.

“Well, let’s do that first and then head back to the hall of circles,” Drelvin suggests, and the group agrees. A search of the pits turns up a secret door. “Well, great! Let’s go that way instead!” Drelvin grins. Nothing like defying death on a daily basis. At least he still has both legs for now.

The secret door leads to a passage wide enough to walk two abreast. The group moves through it and finds that the passage ends in what at first glance appears to be a blank wall, but even a cursory search finds a handle. The wall slides to the side and the party finds themselves at a descending staircase. Down they go- down a 10’ wide stair of narrow steps, dusty and cracked with time. The stairs descend about 30’ and lead to a 20’ long hallway. At the end, cascading to the right, is another downward stair.

“I notice a trend,” Thrush remarks.

Down our heroes go, and then to another hall; but this one is filled with webs.

“Er, webs, hrm,” mutters Drelvin.

The party hesitates. “We could probably burn them off,” suggests Ulla.

“Why don’t we search these hallways first,” Rex suggests. “There are secret doors everywhere in this place. Maybe there’s another way through there.”

“Why now? We found one before.” Cheerily, Drelvin pulls out the cusp and starts looking around while the rest begin a more mundane search. Indeed, as he looks up the top stairs that lead back to the pit, the archer immediately calls out, “Over here! I found one!”

The group hustles over to him and ascends the stairs about halfway. It takes only a few moments to figure out how the secret door opens (it pushes out), and then our heroes are advancing down another dusty hallway unseen by living eyes for who knows how long. Soon it leads them to another door. Everyone hesitates. Drelvin looks it over with his gem but sees nothing out of the ordinary.

“Who wants to open it?” Ulla asks frankly.

Pause for a moment.

“Oh, fine,” Thrush sighs, and throws the door open.

Before the group is what appears to be a large laboratory or workroom of some kind. The walls are lined with shelves cluttered with jars. A large desk and stool, two workbenches and two large tables fill up a great deal of space, but the room is huge. There are clay pots and urns, linen wrappings strewn about, dried herbs that have almost disintegrated over time, bones and skulls, canopic jars, and three large vats about 7’ in diameter and 4’ high. The group starts looking stuff over.

“I think this was a mummy preparation chamber,” Angelfire states. She’s very interested in everything here- it’s giving her some interesting ideas. Wandering over to the large vats, she finds Rex already looking into them. The first appears to hold dirty water; the second, some sort of blue-tinged liquid; and the third, a bright green fluid.

“Look,” Rex says, pointing into the blue-tinged stuff. “There’s something in there.”

Before Angelfire can comment, the dragon disciple plunges his arm into the vat. “Ow!” he cries as the acid within the great vat starts to burn him. He gropes around within the liquid and quickly pulls his arm free, some sort of key in hand. He swears as he pours water on his smoking arm. “Ow! Dammit! Ow! Ow!”

I wonder if there’s anything in the others, Angelfire thinks. Boldly she plunges her arm into the green fluid. An instant later she screams. Jerking her arm free she staggers back a few steps-

Her arm is starting to turn, very quickly, to green slime.


*At this point in the game, Drelvin’s player Craig looked at me and said, “I cast magic missile at the darkness.” You may have heard the infamous audio track he’s referencing...

Next Time:The Crypt of the Demilich!

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I cast it at the darkness?

Given your spoiler heavy post in General Discussion, I'm looking forward to seeing how all of this turns out!

 

[the Jester]

Yeah, I'm curious to see how it all turns out too...

As of now (in game time, not update time) things are ugly for our heroes.

 

[the Jester]

The Agitated Chamber

As she watches her arm dissolve- it’s only going to take seconds and it’ll all be gone- Angelfire lets out another blood-curdling scream. She hasn’t been in danger like this in forever.

And then, against his own better judgment, Patyn steps forward and lays his hands upon Angelfire. The Coilite screams again as the hunter of the dead’s paladin ability to remove disease drives the infesting slime into oblivion.

Patyn steps away. Glaring at the evil one he just saved, he can’t help feeling a little guilt (for saving her) and anger (because she’s clearly not going to be worth the trouble of having saved her). “You owe me your life,” he growls, and turns away.

Gasping, Angelfire recovers herself enough to smirk at Patyn’s back. “Here,” Rex murmurs, giving Angelfire a potion of lesser restoration. She has a little trouble opening it with the Deleter on, but she doesn’t mind. It makes her powerful. With the Deleter, she can defeat anyone. She sighs, tired from wearing it all the time. It drains her, too, but she knows it’s worth it.

There isn’t a doubt in her mind.

Inspecting the room, our heroes find no other exits. “There’s a lot of crap in here,” Drelvin comments, kicking through a pile of debris. “It would take hours to search it all...”

With a sigh, they set to work.

The party is reasonably thorough; they search through all the jars and piles of detritus. They burn off the green slime in the vat, and beneath it they find the other half of the key. Rex, beaming, joins the two pieces. “Good stuff!” he cries. “Now we just need to find where to use it. And I still have another key we need to find out where to use.”

Thrush laughs, shaking his head. “Well, there aren’t any exits. Let’s check for secret doors.”

“Elves are good at that,” Drelvin comments, and true to his word turns up a secret door in seconds.*

“Okay, then,” Ulla says, amused and impressed. “Let’s go.”

The secret door leads to another stairway down. “We keep descending,” Drelvin remarks nervously. “I don’t like being so far underground.”

“This place is unclean... almost unholy,” adds Azekia.

At the bottom of the stair another hall leads away. After a very short distance, the party comes upon a huge open pit full of spikes.

“An open pit?” Rex says dubiously. “I don’t like this open pit.”

“We could climb down,” Thrush starts, but Rex flexes his wings, grabs Drelvin, and flies him across. Azekia likewise ferries Thrush across, and they fly back and forth until everyone makes it across.

“I don’t like that open pit,” Rex repeats.

The group continues on, and the passage continues for about 100’ beyond the pit and dead ends.

”Another secret door somewhere?” speculates Drelvin. “That’s a lot of corridor...”

“It might be in that pit,” Ulla says. “We’ve seen that here before.”

“True... let’s search the walls first.”

The group sets to work, and soon Verzavi cries, “Here! A crack in the wall- yes!” She digs at the wall with her yellow fingertips for a moment, then a section of wall pivots. Crowding around, the group peers through at a small passage ending in a heavy-looking stone door. There’s a moment of hesitation as nobody moves to open it, then Thrush steps up with a sigh.

The room that’s revealed contains rotting sofas, chairs, vases and urns, all yellowed and decaying. Broken bits of tables, stands and braziers are jumbled in a pile near one wall. Many small coffers and trunks lay closed. Large tapestries adorn the walls. Our heroes start to search, gathering up the containers that are locked (which Rex gleefully begins trying his key on) as they come across them

Then the room starts to shake, to agitate; and with a series of loud cries, our heroes are thrown down, staggering and falling as the place shakes.

The party gets out- most dragging themselves across the ground, some flying out. The room seems to subside as the last of them rolls out of it.

“Well, that’s pleasant,” Thrush says cheerfully.

Next Time: Okay, so we aren’t at the demilich quite yet! Maybe next time, though- it’s coming soon. Come back soon for the real trap in the agitated chamber, and then... the crypt.


*Drelvin ain’t real bright, and he doesn’t have many (if any) ranks in Search. But boy, is it funny when this happens- I think he rolled a 19 or 20...

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

That's gotta be one of the luckiest streaks I've ever seen! He just keeps finding them, doesn't he?

 

[the Jester]

A Deadly Trap (pt. 1)

“This place sucks,” Rex complains.

Glancing into the room, the pile of unopened chests the group had started to gather is now strewn about again. “No wonder the place was a mess,” comments Drelvin the archer.

“One of us should go in there and try to throw all those chests out here,” Angelfire suggests. She glances meaningfully at Verzavi. The githzerai gives a short bow and launches herself into the room, hurriedly gathering chests in her arms even as the room starts to agitate. Turning towards the room’s entrance, she springs forward and hurls the chests out of the chamber, then almost loses her balance in the agitating room. Leaping to the side, she recatches her balance mid-jump and lands in the midst of more unsearched chests. Kick! –and two chests slide and tumble out of the room. Then it’s another armload of them and another, the nimble githzerai moving fluidly and keeping her balance at all times. Finally the githzerai sweeps up the last chest and sprints out of the chamber.

“Great!” Lester exclaims, “Loot!”

Each chest turns out to hold a few meager coins, but they’re mostly platinum. Again the visage of Orcus is found on one of them. Again our heroes wonder where the currency would bear such a horrible creature’s face as the Demon Prince of Undead.

”Fortunately,” Patyn tells the group again, “he’s dead.” And the grim hunter of the dead lets one of his rare smiles touch his face.

“Well, it may be difficult to search the place for secret doors, and I suspect that’s our next move,” Drelvin says wryly.

“Perhaps there is something behind the tapestries?” Azekia suggests. She spreads her glorious white wings and flies in to the chamber, up to one of the tapestries. As soon as she grabs hold of it, the room starts to shake, and the tapestry- the huge tapestry- turns to green slime and falls, like a wave, over the celestial.

Next Time: Watch out for waves of green slime! And what nefarious trap is triggered when our heroes try to burn the stuff??

 

[Knightfall]

“Perhaps there is something behind the tapestries?” Azekia suggests. She spreads her glorious white wings and flies in to the chamber, up to one of the tapestries. As soon as she grabs hold of it, the room starts to shake, and the tapestry- the huge tapestry- turns to green slime and falls, like a wave, over the celestial.

Ouch! That's gotta hurt.

 

[the Jester]

Trap inside a Trap

Azekia the solar gives a terrible scream as green slime falls atop her from the tips of her mighty wings to the tops of her sandaled feet. For a moment the party can only gape in horrified fascination. A struggling mass, rapidly transmuting to slime, sinks to one knee-

Patyn springs into the room, ignoring the danger as it starts to agitate, and reaches out to the slime-encrusted angel. Laying his hand upon her wing, the hunter of the dead utters a silent prayer to Galador and removes disease.

In a flash of positive energy, the slime burns away. Patyn quickly stumbles from the room, dragging Azekia with him, and the angel quickly returns the favor, destroying the slime starting to feed on the man’s flesh. The two agents of the Light exchange a thankful glance.

“Well,” Drelvin says wryly, “I know how to handle this!” There’s the rasp of Shastruth, the archer’s sorcerous sword being drawn from his scabbard, and Drelvin cries, “How about a fireball, Shastruth?”

“YES!” shouts the sword, and the sound of spellcasting fills the hall just outside the agitated room for a few seconds- then a ball of angry orange fire blossoms like a rose to fill the agitated chamber, burning the remaining slime away-

Or not.

Because instead, as the fireball detonates with a loud roar, the slime changes instantly into brown mold. The flame and heat only feed it, and in less than a second the mold more than doubles in size. Our heroes can feel heat leeching from them. With shouts of dismay, they fall back away from the mold.

“That sucks!” Thrush exclaims.

“No kidding,” Rex grumps. “You can’t even exploit its weaknesses, it changes to something else!”

Scowling, Patyn asks, “Does anyone know much about this stuff?”

“It sucks heat,” Ulla says. “It’s a deadly dungeon mold, usually called brown mold. I think our best bet to kill will be with cold.”

“If that doesn’t just make it worse,” Horbin mutters.

“Well, Shastruth,” Drelvin sighs, “what have we got?”

***

Far away, in a darkling realm unlit by any sun, Acererak dwells beneath death. If death is to sleep as sleep is to waking, the demilich is in the dreams of a state four times deeper still. Here the vibrations of the Void, paradoxically still and quiet, sooth him like music would a mortal heart.

For Acererak burns inside himself at the presumption of the interloper.

He has laid his own wards, taken advantage of the gauntlet that the demilich laid down in ages past. He has secreted his phylactery there, among the icy dead of Moil, where only Acererak has earned the right to tread! And somehow- somehow- the interloper has managed to tame the Vestige!

Acererak seeths.

Around him the void roils in turmoil, like an inky fluid stirred by the passage of some terrible shark.

After his apotheosis, Acererak the demilich knows, it will not be merely the void around him. The void everywhere will move to his whim, and the entire universe will shake. Even the gods will tremble before him. The interloper is nothing- a temporary irritant, nothing more. The adventurers will doubtless deal with him; he fears them, plainly.

And then, Acererak thinks, they will follow the clues to the Fortress of Conclusion. After all, they are adventurers. And to come so far as they have following the interloper’s clumsy trail- why, they might just be worthy fodder for the apotheosis. And certainly, if they aren’t now, they will be by the time they reach the Fortress.

***

It takes just about everything cold they have, but the party finally manages to destroy every last vestige of the mold. Gratified for that much, at least, they note a passage that had been hidden by one of the tapestries-slimes-molds. Hurriedly, the group passes through the chamber (“Damn, it still agitates!” Thrush complains) and finds another downward staircase.

“Deep,” comments Thrush quietly.

Patyn grimaces. “Let’s find whatever we’re looking for and kill this lich of yours,” he grunts.

The group heads down the stairs. In the lead, Thrush ponders, What the hell are we looking for anyway? Yeah, yeah, Felenga’s phylactery- but where? What’s the clue they’re looking for here? And the riddle-

The face of the fiend does more than devour,
With the least of my form ‘tis the gap to power

-what does that mean??

The stairs bottom out in a passage that leads 30’ to a four-way intersection. Moving carefully, the group discovers a pit trap at the intersection. Smiling smugly, Drelvin comments, “I knew there’d be another trap!”

Moving carefully, the group follows the passage straight ahead. Again they manage to find a pit before anyone falls in, this one about 30’ beyond the intersection and directly before the hall’s end in a door.

“I bet the door’s trapped too,” Thrush says.

Azekia grunts and opens the door, which, to everyone’s surprise, is not trapped. Another hall leads away, turning to the right after some distance. Following this, our heroes remain wary. Suddenly, with a frown, Rex holds up a hand.

“Do you hear something?” he asks.

The group pauses in silence for a moment. A sound is coming from around the corner- a beautiful melody sung in a sweet feminine voice like honey wine on a winter afternoon.

As one, the party readies their weapons, and they advance around the corner.



Next Time: Our heroes have an unfortunate issue with drooling idiocy!